page_title: Vera Chaplina
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Vera Chaplina / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Pupils of Vera Chaplina at the Enclosure for baby animals. Moscow Zoo, 1937. Русский: Воспитанники Веры Чаплиной на Площадке молодняка Московского зоопарка, 1937.
context_page_description: Vera Vasilievna Chaplina was a Soviet children's literature writer and naturalist.
context_section_description: Vera Chaplina was born in Moscow, her grandfather, Vladimir Chaplin, was an engineer, professor and educator of the architect Melnikov. After the Revolution of 1917, 10-year-old Vera was lost and spent several years in an orphanage in Tashkent. In 1923 she returned to Moscow. Her career at the Moscow Zoo began when she was sixteen years old. Chaplina visited the zoo as often as she could and was particularly attracted, as many children are, by the cubs. She appeared so often and stayed so long that she finally attracted the attention of professor Pyotr Manteifel, the zoo's principal naturalist, and he asked her if she would like to become a junior helper. She gladly accepted the offer, and from that time has worked daily in the zoo. In 1924 she entered the Young Biologists' Circle at the Moscow Zoo.
  Vera Chaplina's special interest was the baby animals, and in 1933 she was put in charge of the zoo's motherless youngsters. In 1937 she became chief of one of the zoo's largest departments, the wild animals section Moscow Zoo.
  Over the years Vera Chaplina and her family played host at home to a number of animals — wolves, a leopard, a lynx and a lion cub named Kinuli. Kinuli in Russian means “abandoned”, and the cub had been abandoned by her mother. Vera Chaplina saved the cub. She took it home. fed it from a bottle, nursed it through its first days. And so Kinuli came to be raised in a Moscow apartment in the middle 1930s with Chaplina, her husband, young son and brother — and an assortment of neighbors and their children the growing lioness. Kinuli's story glows with Mrs. Chaplina's love of animals, and her desire to unstill something of this feeling in her readers.
  Vera Chaplina's first book about baby animals Cubs from the green enclosure (Malyshi s zelenoĭ proshchadki), was first published in Russian in 1935. Since then, she wrote many children's books about animals, including My animal pupils (1937; Мои воспитанники), Four-legged friends (1949; Четвероногие друзья), Pupils of the Zoo (1955—1965; Питомцы зоопарка), Casual encounters (1976; Случайные встречи). “Chaplina`s writing is affectionate, but is not sentimental.” “The writing is straightforward and simple, the author`s attitude toward the creatures she cared for both tender and practical.”
  Vera Chaplina worked at the Moscow Zoo until 1946, writing stories when she could find the time. Since then she has devoted more time to literary pursuits and became a full-time writer. Chaplina's stories were translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese Chinese, Hebrew, Polish,  Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Estonian, Romanian, Danish, Swedish, and Serbian.
caption: Pupils of Vera Chaplina at the Enclosure for baby animals. Moscow Zoo, 1937
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